P3-Vol 2.No3 Dec 96 - International Journal of Wilderness

After the Civil War, railroads expanded
western settlement and made
ravenous eastern urban markets accessible
to western natural and agricultural
products. Federal public land laws
of this period encouraged the scandalous
exploitation and abuse of the public
domain. Approximately 50% of U.S.
public forest lands passed into private
ownership within a mere 15-year period,
in a tremendous assault on the
public good from 1863 to 1878. This
was truly a disgraceful era of land theft
and resource exploitation, reflecting an
extension of the political spoils system
to our public domain lands.
We can look back and see that the
National Park System and now the
NWPS are, in part, reactions to exploitation
and destruction of the public
domain. Public uneasiness and disgust
at the exploitation of natural resources
was an important factor in President
Theodore Roosevelt’s progressive political
agenda that led to the establishment
of national forests, wildlife refuges,
national monuments, and other
protected areas. However, it was the
travesty of invading Yosemite National
Park in 1913 for a commercial hydroelectric
power project that contributed
to the establishment, by Congress, of
the NPS in 1916. The NPS grew under
the aggressive leadership of Stephen
Mather, and later, his understudy
Horace Albright, at a time when recreation
and tourism development were
believed to be entirely consistent with
the NPS Organic Act and unrecognized
as impacts on wilderness. It was
only with the legislation in the 1930s
that established Grand Teton and Everglades
National Park, and in the
1940s, Kings Canyon National Park,
that wilderness protection expressly
motivated national park establishment.
The tension between U.S. citizens’
concern for its remnant public domain
lands and acquiescence to the myth of
progress changed even more significantly
in the 1950s and 1960s. In the
mid-1950s, national park lands were
threatened by dam construction, just
as with Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite, but
this time conservationists waged their
war nationally. The plan to build the
Echo Park Dam within Dinosaur National
Monument resulted in the first
truly national campaign of conservation
groups working in close concert.
In a coming of age for the U.S. conservation
movement, the dam proposal
was defeated, despite the powerful
commercial, legislative, and bureaucratic
forces allied in favor of building
it. Leading that conservation battle
were The Wilderness Society and the
Sierra Club. Rather than disband their
coalition and return to fighting isolated
conservation brush fires, the groups
opted in 1955 to redirect it to press for
federal legislation for wilderness protection.
As Roderick Nash has written,
“the Echo Park victory gave promise
that statutory wilderness preservation
might be more than a dream.” Today
there are more than 100 million acres
of designated wilderness in the NWPS.
This system lies at the heart of that deep
and abiding concern of the U.S. public
to take care of those public lands to
whom progress will show no mercy.
The NPS is in the heritage-keeping
business. The heritage we keep
embodies the entire gamut of human
interactions with Earth, with so-called
nature and culture, from wilderness at
one end of the spectrum to intense
urbanism at the other. From Alaska’s
Gates of the Arctic that Bob Marshall
so loved, to Philadelphia’s Independence
Hall that symbolizes the heart
of our great experiment in national
self-government. The NPS is unique
as a national entity for its mission to
preserve the real places that exemplify
the whole of that treasured spectrum
in perpetuity. We mean to do our best
with our wilderness heritage too. We
know and share with all other wilderness
stewards the meaning and challenge
of a mission “in perpetuity.” We
are set for wilderness stewardship. We
are fully engaged with the interagency
Arthur H. Carhart National Wilderness
Leadership Training Center and are
represented on its staff. Our wilderness
steering committee is involved in making
wilderness management part of
everyday NPS business. This means
addressing wilderness management as
a training issue, funding issue, person-
The heart of our great experiment in national self-government.
(Photo by Richard Frear, U.S. National Park Service.)
Land stewardship is not
independent from social
and political realities but
entwined with our history,
culture, politics, and faith.
nel management issue, social issue, and,
therefore perhaps most importantly, an
education issue. We are looking for the
best way to engage with the interagency
Aldo Leopold Wilderness
Research Institute. We know the need
for wild areas and the recognition of
that need most likely will grow, not
diminish.
We recognize that the story of wilderness
is the story of the United States,
a story that serves as our link to the
commonalities of our many-storied
natural and cultural past. It is also a story
that will continue and evolve, so we
must not be complacent about the
challenges we face. Democratic government
is by its very nature always an
experiment “to be continued.”
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF WILDERNESS/Volume 2, Number 3, December 1996 7